Agnes Varda, the 89-year-old Belgian-born filmmaking legend, emerges from her hotel room having dressed up for an evening event at Lincoln Center. She holds out the large silver heart-shaped medallion strung around her neck. “I have a big heart,” she says with a smil A truer thing has never been said. Since her 1962 New Wave breakthrough, the real-time masterwork “Cléo From 5 to 7,” and running up until her latest, the richly ennobling road trip documentary “Faces Places,” Varda’s much-distinguished career has been defined by a soul-searching warmth, an abiding, compassionate curiosity, and a deep desire, above all, to…
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2017 Polish Film Festival Los Angeles will open on October 18th and will go on until October 26th. Here is the complete program of the festival. (All films with English subtitles.) OPENING NIGHT GALA (by invitation only) Wednesday, October 18, 2017 Egyptian Theatre , 6712 Hollywood Blvd., Hollywood, CA. 90028 6:00 PM RECEPTION (Catering by Turek) 8:00 PM OPENING OF THE FESTIVAL– Zbigniew Banas (MC) Screening of THE ART OF LOVING. STORY OF MICHALINA WISLOCKA (Sztuka kochania. Historia Michaliny Wislockiej) by Maria Sadowska – (in person: Maria Sadowska, Piotr Adamczyk, Justyna Wasilewsk, Arkadiusz Jakubik, Michal Sobocinski) Laemmle’s NoHo7 Theatre, 5240 Lankershim Blvd., North…
HP Workstation Department is the partner and sponsor of Bridging the Borders Award at the Palm Spring International Film Festival and Palm Springs ShortFest Film Festival. To learn more about what HP Workstation offers for filmmakers and editors and involvement of HP by supporting cultural activities we spoke with Josh Peterson. Josh Peterson is currently Head of Product Management for HP’s Workstation and Immersive Computing business. He has worldwide product portfolio responsibility for desktop workstations, mobile workstations, immersive computing, and all related accessories. Josh has spent over 16 years at HP and has led product management, strategic alliances, and fostering…
Based on a list issued recently by Indiwire Website, a famous daily news site of the independent film community, the performance of renowned Iranian actress Leila Hatami in the movie ‘A Separation’ has been placed among the 25 best female performances of the 21st century. “Much has been made about the dearth of strong female roles in contemporary cinema, and the problematic depictions of women in many recent movies, but the past two decades have provided plenty of counterexamples. While the onus is on writers and directors to craft strong female characters, the actresses themselves bring these figures to life,…
The Iranian drama ‘Breath’ (Nafas), directed by female filmmaker Narges Abyar, has been selected as the country’s official submission to the 90th Academy Awards in the best foreign language film category. A committee of nine cinema professionals (including four directors, an actor, a composer, a producer, a film critic, and a cinema official) was assigned by Iran’s Farabi Cinema Foundation to choose the county’s submission to the Oscar race. “The movie ‘Breath’ was selected by a majority vote,” committee spokesman Amir Esfandiari said on Tuesday, adding that the Committee hopes Abyar’s film would further introduce Iran’s capacities to a wider…
Tehran-born, Montreal-based director Sadaf Foroughi wins Discovery Fipresci Award and Honorable mention as the Best Canadian First Feature at the 2017 Toronto International Film Festival. “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri” won the audience award on Sunday at the Toronto Film Festival, putting it in prime position to compete at the Academy Awards. Directed by Martin McDonagh, “Three Billboards” stars Frances McDormand as a woman who takes a stand against the police, using the titular three billboards after her daughter is murdered and months later no arrests have been made. The rest of the cast includes Woody Harrelson, Sam Rockwell (who, along with McDormand,…
Times, they are a-changing. That hopefully appears to be the case when it comes to the products of the South African film industry. For many years, most local films hitting cinemas would be either slapstick comedies, cheesy rom-coms or dusty period dramas set in small platteland dorpies. Then came Gavin Hood’s Tsotsi and Neill Blomkamp and suddenly SA was on the radar of international cinephiles. However, the local industry hasn’t really delivered on that trailblazing promise though – at least not in a major recognisable way. But things are starting to happen. Even when newer local movies are not wholly…
The Toronto International Film Festival has downsized a bit for its 42nd edition, running Sept. 7 to 17, but the buzz about its film offerings roars as loudly as always. In fact, our 17th annual “Chasing the Buzz” poll of the most eagerly anticipated movies at TIFF identified 25 films offering particular cinematic sustenance, up one from last year’s 24, and that’s out of a feature lineup that’s been pared to 255-plus movies, down from 296 in 2016. No one movie dominated the polling of the Star’s 31-member panel of critics, programmers, professors and regular film buffs. But six films…
At Cinema Without Borders we had the opportunity of interviewing VALÉRIE MÜLLER and famed French dancer/choreographer ANGELIN PRELJOCAJ, directors of the Polina in a phone interview and create a video from the audio of the interview and footage from the film. https://vimeo.com/231979649 Rigorously trained from an early age by a perfectionist instructor, Polina (played by Anastasia Shevtsova, a professional dancer who has performed with Saint Petersburg’s Mariinsky Theatre) is a promising classical ballet dancer. She is just about to join the prestigious Bolshoi Ballet when she discovers contemporary dance, a revelation that throws everything into question on a profound level. Diverting…
These days, it seems as though life in the Trump era could easily deteriorate into a nerve-racking thriller or an apocalyptic horror movie. But do leaders have any influence on films made during their time in office? Last week, U.S. President Donald Trump – the leader of the free world, as the holder of the office is usually called – taught us there’s no difference between good and evil, or between the good guys and the bad guys. That happened when Trump reacted to events in Charlottesville, Virginia, on August 12, when the Ku Klux Klan and other racist right-wing…